Teen-Aid Celebrates Its 25^th Anniversary

Teen-Aid is a private nonprofit organization established in 1981. Its purpose is to promote character and abstinence-until-marriage by connecting children to their parents and teaching life skills. Teen-Aid public school curriculum materials have been sold in all 50 states and over 30 foreign countries. Teen-Aid is the oldest directive and broad scope education program. The materials have a scientific foundation and help focus on the connection between personal behavior and positive or negative outcomes. Materials address interpersonal relationship skills and include over 1,000 footnotes from scientific and medical journals documenting the information given to students. Medical materials are written by a practicing physician.

 

Learning strategies vary from the youth development approach of activities to giving information not readily available through mass media on family relationships. The Teen-Aid organization fosters a community approach and encourages diverse means of reaching young people where they live with the abstinence message. Community consultation with Teen-Aid results in seeing the big picture for positive youth outcomes.

 

Teen-Aid materials focus on character development skills, (the habit of doing good). Training is in specific skills empowering young people to achieve goals and make wise decisions. Parents are involved through printed materials for every lesson. In the 1999-2000 school year, over 41,000 families were served with these vehicles for parent-teen communication.

 

These materials have a twenty five-year track record of being appropriate for diverse settings: juvenile detention facilities, public and private schools, by parents and their home community service organizations, and churches. The wide variety of printed and multimedia materials beyond curricula allows school and community programs to have continuity of philosophy while developing diverse venues of expressing the abstinence-until-marriage and positive health messages. Many school districts have used Teen-Aid materials continuously for more than 15 years. Parents and staff find the varied activities meaningful again and again.

 

Independent evaluation for program effectiveness including teacher performance is ongoing since 1987. Many communities have chosen not to study the correlation between the sexual behavior and education programs, for various reasons, but those that have monitored pregnancy and STD data have been pleased with the results of their educational program.

 

Teen-Aid trains approximately 300 to 500 teachers per year to use their programs at various grade levels. An upper elementary program, Maturing in Body and Character, a junior high program, Me, My World, My Future, and a senior high program being revised for the fourth time called The Character Connection; Sexuality Commitment and Family enables school districts to have continuity of message and consistent training for staff. Teacher in-service training sessions receive high praise.